Tax Cuts: The New Religion
The sainted Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison may have a point in her News op-ed today about not eliminating the Bush tax cuts during a recession. However, she quickly lowers herself into the same tired — and easily discredited — mumbo-jumbo that comes directly from the Republican Nat’l Committee, circa 1985. First, dear Kay, “tax-and-spend” is preferable to the borrow-and-spend philosophy of the current GOP administration, which has created the highest deficits and the largest increases to the national debt in our history. Second, if the Bush tax cuts are responsible for the economy’s job creation, why did the Clinton-era tax increases result in even more jobs? Third, besides opposing a redesign of the Bush tax cuts, what exactly do you, as a United States Senator, propose to do to restore fiscal sanity to a federal government whose spending has run amok during your last seven years in office?
Really, this has gotten to be too much. This is a party — my GOP — that wouldn’t even raise taxes to pay for a war. It is locked in an ideological mind-set whose chief attribute is recklessness. It stands against everything that conservatism once stood for: pragmatism, prudence, and the idea of safeguarding our country’s patrimony to future generations. (And, beloved Senator, what have you done today about Medicare and Social Security, besides, of course, voting to expand its costs?)
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Amen. On a local level, many Texas cities are continuing to make property tax exemptions lower for senior citizens. Between increased spending and debt in Washington and a steadily declining local tax base, the next 40 years could lead to our greatest depression ever.
And all because Republicans still worship at the “no new taxes” altar.
Hello Republicans,
Here’s yesterday’s Doonesbury, in case you missed it.
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20080406
We need more Hensarlings, fewer GWBs and KBHs. Here’s a plan — cut spending for 2 years, use the excess funds to pay down the debt. Then cut taxes. As the economy then booms, take the increased tax receipts and use them to help fix Social Security. As you put money into Social Security, you then have the political capital to actually fix it (AARP be damned). It ain’t that hard, as long as you are outside the Beltway.
Hear, Hear!
Keep the tax cuts, cut spending, stop asking your Congressman for money to fix porches, local museums, etc. Many of the earmarks and other local spending are nowhere near being constitutional. Get government out of the retirement and health business. We don’t need “bridges to nowhere’, we don’t need more monuments to Senator Byrd in West Virginia.
Amen! Where have the true Republicans gone?
Did no one else notice that the biggest increase in spending that we have seen over the last seven years is going to pay for a war that should never have been waged? End the war, bring the troops home, and stop feeding KBR/Halliburton/Blackwater, and perhaps we can regain control over our government.
You would have to be insane to even CONSIDER, for more than one millionth of a second, ANY federal tax increase.
That goes for every state, as well.
The budget isn’t balanced? Fine. Cut spending. No, NOT THE STUFF THE CONSTITUTION MANDATES, cut the stuff Congress uses to buy votes. Start a plan to END SS, and put people on the track of saving their own money for their own retirement.
Our nation’s capital is drowning in a sea of tax wealth so immense we cannot imagine it, much less actually comprehend its reality. Yet, here’s the utterly mindless proposition we should consider raising taxes more?
HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND COMPLETELY?????
Bravo to Wick Allison: Gutsy and fair minded assessments of righteous rage.
To those still in denial about the current carnage… I appreciate your intellect, but seriously, you tend to turn the message on its ideological ear. Perhaps you need to re-read Allison’s post to which we are supposedly responding.
What WicK is saying in his response to Senator Hutchison (a possible VP candidate) here is not the least bit vague. Rather, it is profoundly specific. And those ‘illegal earmarks’ you allude to were largely GOP congressional this century and all until recently signed at the ‘Y’all come’ White House’. During the 6 years of total GOP congressional control, according to no less than the WSJ, over 15,000 earmarks in 6 years went un-vetoed vs. 1,500 in the previous administration. But here you mention Senator Byrd?
It’s like if someone shot a priest in rural Delaware, like a slingshot you’d roll out the ‘Dems did it’ one liners. Why remain so inflexible in the face of serious rage sounded by serious conservatives with whom you would instantly agree…IF they too spouted wind up doll mantra, ‘the Dems did it’. Did what?
What Wick Allison and Rod Dreher…both died in the wool Republican Conservatives say today…Rod in response to Wick and Wick in response to Kay…. that this decade has been a mockery of everything the GOP in general and Conservatism specifically, proposed to ’stand for’. That is their words and trust me, they can back them up. And PS: W.F. Buckley said as much before he died.
(And no, I am not a blind partisan. I actively supported Senator John McCain when he was running in 1999, thank you very much and FYI, President Ford against Jimmy Carter, so keep that powder dry.)
Rod Dreher conservative? Heck no. Rod’s gone off the deep end and turned into a mindless liberal. Anyone considering that we should raise taxes IS MINDLESS.
We’re bankrupting our nation with our taxes, yet you talk about raising rates… As if it were some “intellectually honest” thing. No, it’s stupidity X 1,000,000,000!!!!
I don’t feel we can honestly jump into partisan boats to escape this. The problem is everyone feels they can have now and pay later.
I’ll bet those complaining the loudest about taxes are the same ones demanding all the services our taxes support.
The state has taken a HUGE bite out of the small business owner with the revised Franchise taxes (hmmm, still waiting for our property tax decrease that was supposed to offset this). Our small retail business is paying the lower rate of .5% of gross sales, and we can have deductions to reduce the taxable amount, but the end result is a new tax payment of over 5% of our net income.
Does this motivate our organization to expand? No. Does this motivate us to find ways to cut costs? Yes. The quickest way would be to reduce labor costs and find ways to increase productivity of the remaining staff. Not layoffs, just leave open positions unfilled.
I agree 100% with Wick — this administration has grossly betrayed the conservative principles with which I agree– in short, fiscal sobriety is entirely lacking from its collective character. One can’t spend money like a drunk sailor while curtailing one’s revenue stream. George Bush has simply spent a lifetime writing checks he knew would clear, no need for him to balance the checkbook. What a smirking little punk he is.
Meanwhile, this admin has pandered — albeit insufficiently, to hear some tell it — to the “cultural conservatives.” Since when should the federal government be arbiters of our culture? Terri Schiavo was the height of their folly in this regard. Also the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment. Leave us the eff alone.
Whoever wins in November, it will be good riddance to bad trash as far as I’m concerned.
Raise taxes or lower taxes, who cares as long as Congress does the really important peoples work of getting to the bottom of major league baseballs steroid problem.
We should cut all of the pork barrel projects except Fort Worth’s new town lake and Trinity development, because I live withing the boundries of that pig.
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”-George Orwell
Start a plan to END SS, and put people on the track of saving their own money for their own retirement.
Hey, Mark K, you do understand that the Bush numbers would look vastly worse right now if it weren’t for the fact that he’s padding the budget with about $400 billion in Soc Sec and Medicare surpluses, right? And that at this moment, those two programs bring in more money than they pay out?
If we end Soc Sec and don’t raise taxes, we’ll need about a half trillion dollars in non-Soc Sec and non-Medicare expense cutting to balance the budget. So where are you proposing we cut? The next biggest thing is the military. You wanna’ go there?
Guys, when tax rates are reduced the economy improves, the lower rates are applied to increased incomes and the government receives more total tax revenue. This has happened during these last 6 years, but the over spending has over shadowed this benefit, it’s out of control and has to be curtailed.
Who said that we pay taxes? The majority of people do not, at least in the New York City. I am a tax preparer and I live in Brooklyn, NY. Income of my clients varies from $1,000 to $750,000 a year. People with income below $100,000 do not pay what they are supposed to. Tax cheating is everywhere. Taxpayers take fake deductions. I have seen tax many tax returns where mortgage interest and property taxes were deducted by people who do not own any property. The IRS turned into a customer service answering questions “Where is my refund”. Thousands of fake deductions are deducted as unreimbursed employees expenses. However, families with income of $150,000 and higher can not deduct the majority of these expenses because of Alternative Minimum Tax. They are the ones who pay taxes.